Apple iPad App Review Marathon [Part1]

After getting our hands on the iPad and releasing our initial review, we found ourselves sitting with an empty iPad and that's no fun. To fill in the empty void, all we had to do was to get but which apps were worth it and which aren't? We are going to cover several apps over the course of this upcoming week in order to help you guys make the right choice. Stay tuned for more app reviews and if you have any in particular you want reviewed, drop a comment below, message us on twitter, or contact us on the forums or the contact form. If you would also like to see a more in depth review, do the same. We're here to help you guys make the right choice. This post covers the following apps:

ABC Player

Marvel Comics

Geometry Wars Touch

Netflix

Pandora

NYT's Editor's Choice

Tweetdeck

Epicurious

Smule's Magic Piano

AIM

Adobe Ideas

ABC Player

The video on the ABC player looks great and loads quickly when on WiFi. It is a free player though and you are still stuck watching all the ads similar to the web player on the website. There is no way to skip them but it isn’t bad for those of you who are already used to it. The portrait mode works fine but a large portion of this screen is taken up by navigation, when you’re watching the video, we’d recommend switching over to landscape view or utilizing the zoom-in option to fill the screen. The app is free and is a pretty good port of the ABC website. [iTunes]

Marvel Comics

The Marvel Comics app is good but not great. Portrait mode is good for reading an entire page of a comic and you can even double tap to zoom in on a specific panel. The major issue we had was the lack of two-page layouts in landscape mode and the feel of being able to “flip through pages” of a written piece of work (both of which are features in iBooks.) The comics look great on the iPad screen and the interface works fine (nothing special.) Comics are $2 each and the app itself is free. [iTunes]

Geometry Wars Touch

The game looks fantastic despite it being graphically less impressive than the XBLA version. The controls are well thought out and work well with a touchscreen, but when comparing to two physical joysticks, you miss out on twitch action most advanced players need. The ability of putting your thumbs down anywhere on the left and right sides of the screen to activate, move, and shoot sticks dynamically is a cool new paradigm. One control issue was the bomb button in the middle of the screen which is hard to hit quickly when playing. Another gripe was the inability to resume games if you exit the app and come back. Other then that, the game is a little pricey but still worth the money for hardcore gamers. $9.99 [iTunes]

Netflix

The Netflix app for the iPad is amazing. It is essentially the Netflix webpage ported into an app, you can scroll and tap through new releases or view a list of your existing queue. A quick button press allows you to view a full-screen stream of your video. The only thing that could further the user experience in this app would be a Roku or Xbox-like Cover Flow option to flick through your queue, on top of a generally smoother experience scrolling through the movie browsing interface. The app is a stellar implementation of the services and just needs a few small bugs to be ironed out. Free. [iTunes]

Pandora

Nothing new. The Pandora app for the iPad doesn’t have many changes over the iPhone version other than the artist information that is displayed. The company didn’t seem to take advantage of the extra space to do anything new and creative. Despite the lack of innovation, Pandora in itself is useful but for those of you who were seeking to keep Pandora running while doing other stuff, there is still no multitasking available as of yet so you are stuck. Free [iTunes]

NYT Editor's Choice

The NYT Editor’s Choice evolves the experience of a newspaper on a mobile screen. You can toggle between newspaper-style front pages amongst five categories which include: News, Business, Technology, Opinions, and Features. It looks great in both landscape and portrait. You can click on a story and dissolve it to the full article. You can even email the articles, the only thing that is missing the option to search. Free [iTunes]

TweetDeck

Tweetdeck makes good use of the wider screen to put more information in front of your face, which is the entire point of TweetDeck in the first place. It’s fast and rearranging columns is easy with the use of double-tapping and dragging. Overall, a pretty solid Twitter implementaton that is on par with its desktop version. Free. [iTunes]

Epicurious

The iPad layout of this app is simply amazing. Viewing lists is simple and makes more sense than browsing through recipes Cover Flow style. The sheer speed and fluidity of navigation, the ability to add recipes to your collection, and then save the recipes as itemized shopping lists is all very impressive. The app seems very refined and is polished, functional, and perfect for those of you who are chefs or would like to be. Free [iTunes]

Smule's Magic Piano

This app is brought to you by the same guys who made Leaf Trombone, Ocarina, and T-Pain’s sing-along fun times; so they definitely know music apps. Magic Piano is a bit strange at first since they keys to the piano are invisible by default and you have to learn the positions to make music. You will have the option to set the number of keys on your piano and even to have it in a circular pattern if you wish. All-in-all, the app is a fun music app by guys who know how to make good music apps. $3 [iTunes]

AIM

The app is just AIM for the iPad for free. The instant-messaging part works great in both landscape and portrait views, although using it in landscape mode allows more features at the tip of your fingers. The typing isn’t fantastic but good enough and everything is pretty responsive. The Lifestream portion of the app is a little weird, and the ability to use Facebook, Twitter, Delicious, YouTube, MySpace, and Digg in the apps is less than stellar. Leave those social media features for other stand-alone apps and use the AIM application for instant messaging. Free [iTunes]

Adobe Ideas

Ideas is a free sketch app made by Adobe. The app is powerful enough to create good content if you know what you are doing. For those of you still clueless, you won’t like this app much. It has a simple user interface as well as compatibility with Illustrator and Photoshop on the desktop. The whole application is free so you can’t really complain about much. [iTunes]